The WGA Strike is On

After a lot of will they, won’t they, maybe it’ll all just go away like one bad nightmare, that included a last-ditch effort on Sunday to resolve the dispute, the Writers Guild of America have officially gone on strike with WGA members in New York walking the picket line. According to all the experts, the most immediate impact will be felt on the late-night talk shows, where armies of staffers write jokes for Letterman, Leno, and Conan. But wait — how will this impact the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, bar none my favorite talk show for the last few years? Ferguson writes a lot of his own material, in particular his long, wandering monologue. We’ll find out later tonight.

Late-night TV will be the first to be affected by the strike, starting tonight in most cases. John Oliver, a writer-actor from The Daily Show With Jon Stewart who was marching at 30 Rock this morning, says he and his colleagues were still writing on Friday in hopes that a strike would somehow be averted. “But there will be no show tonight. We’re off tonight, the rest of the week, and the rest of the month. Well, let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”